Cast: William H. Macy, John Ritter, Neve Campbell, Donald Sutherland, Tracey Ullman, Barbara Bain, David Dorfman
Director: Henry Bromell
Producers: Matt Cooper, Andrew Lazar, Lori Miller
Screenplay: Henry Bromell
Cinematography: Jeff Jur
Music: Brian Tyler
U.S. Distributor: Artisan Entertainment
Henry Bromell's Panic, is a perfect example of what the average independent film has become in 2000. It features recognizable stars and has the kind of storyline with the potential to play reasonably well in the average American multiplex. Like Grosse Pointe Blank, Analyze This, and TV's "The Sopranos", Panic features a premise that's quickly growing tired - that of a gangster/bad guy who visits a shrink. In this case, the patient is Alex (William H. Macy). Ultimately, the film is less about his relationship with his doctor (played by John Ritter) than about the reasons he's seeing a psychologist in the first place.
The beginning of Panic plays a lot like that of American Beauty, and the two have more than a few plot elements in common. Alex is suffering through a mid-life crisis. In a line that sounds like it was written for Kevin Spacey in the 2000 Best Picture winner, he comments, "Do you ever get the feeling you're dead - like a dog hit in the street and left there to rot." It turns out that Alex is tired of his marriage and wants to find a way out of the family business - being a hit man. While spending time in the psychologist's waiting room, he meets and bonds with Sarah (Neve Campbell), a "pretty young thing." Soon, he is obsessed with her and she is finding his "beautiful, sad eyes" difficult to resist.
However, as promising as Panic is at the outset, the last half hour disappoints. The mix of drama and black comedy devolves into standard melodramatic fare, and the concluding act is depressingly conventional. Bromell also cheats his audience by going for the easy way out - that way, there are no loose ends left dangling, and everything is tied up into a tidy package that uses the final scene as an ironic bow. The edge evidenced by Panic during its first half is nowhere in sight by the time the end credits begin to roll.
The film features five key relationships. The one accorded the most screen time is that between Alex and Sarah. Because the dialogue between the two has a natural, unforced feel and because Neve Campbell displays actual acting aptitude, the scenes between these two generally work. Equally effective is the interaction between Alex and his father (Donald Sutherland), who is using a combination of guilt and parental domination to keep his adult son in the business. There's a little bit of Affliction in this father/son bond, but Panic never gets as dark as the Paul Schrader movie. The film's three underdeveloped relationships are those between Alex and his shrink, Alex and his son (played by young David Dorfman, who, despite being cute, is not a very good actor), and Alex and his wife (Tracey Ullman).
Had Bromell displayed a little more inventiveness and willingness to explore darker territory, Panic could have been an engrossing motion picture from start to finish. As it is, it's the kind of movie that is sporadically compelling, but not consistently so. Once you've seen the first hour, there's really no need to sit through the rest, since almost everything that transpires during the final thirty minutes is easily predicted by anyone who understands the conventional storyline handbook.
© 2001 James Berardinelli